What is the best method to normalize pitch? I need to compare the L2 tone productions of Spanish learners of Mandarin Chinese with native Chinese children's productions.
Francis Nolan tested a few methods and recommend semitone in this paper: http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/francis/Nolan%20Semitones.pdf
I use semitone conversion in my paper "Effects of talker-to-listener distance on tone" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273889335_Effects_of_talker-to-listener_distance_on_tone
where I did similar task: Compare tones across very different pitch ranges, and evaluate why L2 listeners have problem with some productions but not others. I use polynomial decomposition converting tones to three numbers, then working with numbers are a lot easier than working with pitch contours.
Article Effects of talker-to-listener distance on tone
Hola, Lucrecia. At the Phonetics Laboratory of the University of Barcelona we generally use semitones. Here you have one reference:
PAMIES BERTRÁN, A.; A. M. FERNÁNDEZ PLANAS; E. MARTÍNEZ CELDRÁN; A. ORTEGA ESCANDELL i M. C. AMORÓS CÉSPEDES (2002): «Umbrales tonales en el español peninsular», Actas del II Congreso de Fonética Experimental, Sevilla, Universidad de Sevilla, pp. 272-278.
In case you are interested in more publications, you might have a look at our website (http://stel.ub.edu/labfon/en/publicactions).
Una abraçada
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